Terry Gorman: Lots of questions about proposed driver ed program

Friday

May 19, 2017 at 5:35 PMMay 19, 2017 at 5:35 PM

The May 18 news article, “Parents may have to take driver’s ed, too,” confirms that House Bill 5457 has passed the House of Representatives. This bill was put forth with the best of intentions, I‘m sure. We would all agree that the more parental and adult involvement, the better off our children will be.

However, have lawmakers considered the potential for this bill to create an unaffordable additional cost to state taxpayers? We currently have 30,000-plus illegal aliens and 1,200-plus recently arrived refugees, any number of which may be children, along with at least 822 unaccompanied alien children. Mandating a driver’s education course for parents, guardians and designees of those children at no cost to them poses some potentially serious problems.

The aforementioned groups speak many foreign languages. Will this “no cost” to the attendees program require state taxpayers to foot the bill for various interpreting services for potentially any number of those non-English speaking parents, guardians and designees? Will this course be provided for illegal alien parents in their chosen language, or could those children be denied a license due to their parents’ illegal status?

Perhaps since AAA suggested such legislation, our legislators could encourage it to pay for the program. Any chance?

Terry Gorman

Lincoln

The writer is executive director of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement.